


different colors

by enterprisecaptainoikawa, kingdavidbowie



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Art Student AU, Gen, M/M, harry plays guitar, louis is a loser for romantic comedies, louis is a punk and liam is weary of the world, louis is asexual, zayn is nonbinary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5440106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enterprisecaptainoikawa/pseuds/enterprisecaptainoikawa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingdavidbowie/pseuds/kingdavidbowie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m gonna go try and,” Louis considers his options for a moment. He’s seen hundreds of romance movies, knows how this goes. “Movie magic,” he tells Zayn. “I’m gonna try for that.”</p><p>His first grand plan involves tossing an exorbitant amount of cash in guitar boy’s open case. Except Louis doesn’t have an exorbitant amount of cash on him. He’s got a couple of quarters in his jeans, and he’s probably going to need those to ride the bus eventually. Plan B involves tossing a rose into the case, maybe with his phone number scrawled on a slip of paper wrapped around it. Louis is also short on flowers, as it is.</p><p>In the end, he does what’s probably the best thing possible: he completely fucks it up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	different colors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cruellouelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruellouelle/gifts).



> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOFgGMWYJTDbKvDFmy-oSsgY82Lppcerf

_a color: white_

Louis’s art professor has weary eyes. It’s mostly because Liam always looks sort of sad, Louis thinks, but it’s also the look he’s come to expect to fall over the man’s face every time he circles the class and comes back to look at the canvas Louis is painting over. Or, depending on the day, this being one of them, the canvas he’s _not_ painting over.

“So,” says Liam. He raises his eyebrows, thick and expressive like brushstrokes, at Louis’s blank page of a piece. “Tell me again how this work personifies your current state of mind, Louis.”

Louis leans back on his paint-splattered stool, halfway between being relaxed and just as frustrated as his professor probably is, standing in front of an empty canvas an hour and a half into their studio time. “I think my work is flawless,” he starts after a moment of thoughtful contemplation, and grins a little at the twitch in Liam’s eyebrows. “It perfectly personifies my lack of ideas. Like myself, the canvas also is stubborn, refusing to be painted by anything but a perfect idea, and I haven’t thought of one yet. Thus, like my current state of mind, the canvas is also blank.”

He’s been making this into a game in the last few weeks of class, seeing how long it takes him to make his professor snap. Today is the fastest yet; Liam sighs and gives up without even attempting to instigate battle. “You couldn’t at least paint over the canvas with white?” 

Louis lifts a hand as if to say, “Hey, what can you do?” Liam grimaces as if to say, “You could paint literally _anything_ so I won’t have to give you another failing grade. You could paint like Niall does and just splatter colors on the damn page, Louis. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Instead, he just says, “Do _something,_ Louis,” and then strides over to the blonde boy sitting next to Louis, who has no qualms about getting up to his shoulders in color as he works. Louis hides a snort when Niall turns around to address their professor and flicks a large spot of blue onto the man’s shirt. 

For his part, Liam doesn’t really care about the stain, just sighs again and laughs a little. Niall’s too amiable to be angry with, and Liam’s too artistic at heart to do anything but consider that maybe his shirt looks a little more interesting with blue paint splattered across the front. 

It does, Louis thinks. He gives Niall a thumbs up and receives a sunny grin in return. Liam sighs.

Louis gets a text message from his roommate a minute later, a picture of Zayn’s fingernails newly painted black, still shiny. _I feel so damn pretty,_ says Zayn, and Louis realizes he’s holding onto his cheek like a proud parent on the verge of tears. It’s not so different from the truth, he supposes, tilting his head as he starts looking at the canvas again, an idea forming in his head.

“My beautiful genderfluid child feels pretty,” he tells Niall when he’s finished painting Zayn’s hands, black and brown on a purple canvas. The blonde boy claps his hands together like he’s Zayn’s other proud parent, even if he’s never actually met the kid. He holds up a brush in question and Louis nods, watching in amusement as Niall paints a yellow smiley face in the corner of the violet canvas. 

Liam looks like he wants to cry a bit when he comes around at the end of class to look at Louis’s work. “You paint so nicely; why do you have to be so stubborn?” his eyebrows plead. “That’s good,” he says out loud. “Just put it on the drying rack when you’re done so I can look it over again later for grading.”

Louis pauses, though. “I feel like it needs something,” he says, pursing his lips. “Something _more._ ”

Liam tilts his head. “What are you thinking?”

“It’s really pretty, but I don’t feel like it’s _like_ Zayn; it’s not _gritty_ enough, I think.” 

So, five minutes later, his roommate’s hands are covered with black spray paint. _So give me one good reason, why we need to be like them,_ the letters say. It’s one of Louis’s favorite songs; he likes to scrawl the lyrics in sharpie on his palms or scratch them into park benches in ballpoint pen. They fit.

“It’s perfect,” says Louis, and class ended twenty minutes ago and his professor’s eyebrows are begging him to go home so that _Liam_ can, but it is perfect, really. Zayn is finding theirself, and that’s beautiful to Louis. It looks beautiful on the canvas. When he draws Zayn, he can find that sense of truth and contentedness that he hasn’t found for himself yet. It’s a vicarious life, but it’s better than the one he had before he got to college.

Screw then. Then, capital-T Then, was a series of relationships each more shitty than the last, starting out like the brilliant explosions of paint that Niall creates on his canvas, all pretty and cheerful and fizzling out after every initial _bang!_ So Louis doesn’t want every perfect date to culminate in kissing in the backseat of the other person’s car, much less anything more than that. It doesn’t really have to be a big deal, does it?

But it’s ruined the last three relationships he had. As nice as some of them were, they all ended. Louis finished the last one himself because he knew where it was going and just didn’t want to have to go through the whole ordeal again. So he broke up with the guy, came back to his and Zayn’s dorm room and watched a shitload of romantic comedies on Netflix and made some frustrated, red-colored paintings. 

So he’s still on that kick after a summer at home, working part time at the local toy store and drawing with crayons behind the counter instead of acrylic paint. What’s he supposed to do?

_black_

“God, not everyone wants to date a person just because they want to fuck them,” he moans at Zayn later, in their dorm room. Zayn sits on their bed going through photographs they’ve taken on their camera, black fingernails tapping the next button every few seconds as they listen to Louis. “I mean, there’s such a thing as romance, isn’t there? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure there’s a hell of a lot of movies about it that don’t even have sex scenes in them.” 

Making his point, he makes an exasperated gesture at the stack of DVDs piled on top of his dresser, probably looking very Liam-esque in his weariness. “I just want to meet someone nice,” says Louis. “And then go on dates. And be in love and all that shit. It sounds so _simple_ , Zayn. _Dammit_.” He collapses back onto his bed, head hitting his pillow with a solid _oomph._ “Maybe I just have bad luck.”

Lying on his back Louis is surrounded by the posters he’s plastered to the wall, pictures of his favorite bands yanked out of magazines, some of them added to with acrylic paint and permanent marker. Lyrics scrawled on notebook paper are stuck in the spaces between them, all of it adhered to the walls and ceiling with blue sticky tack (and a little pink chewing gum, from the times he’d run out). He casts a mournful eye at the lead guitarist of one of his favorites and asks with said pupil, “Why can’t I just meet someone as nice as you? Why does it have to be so difficult? Why does sex permeate the media so completely and never leave consideration for the fact that not everyone is a fan of it?”

Out loud, he says, “I’m giving up hope, Zayn. I don’t know if I’m ever gonna find someone, or if my art’s gonna get better, or if I’ll figure out what the hell I’m doing with my degree—it doesn’t even have to be now. I just want to know that _eventually_ I’ll meet someone who feels the same way as me. And figure the rest out, too.”

Zayn’s fingers pause on the camera button. Their usual role in these conversations is as listener, hearing everything and saying close to nothing but offering emotional support with a hand on Louis’s shoulder. Sometimes they suggest that the two of them watch one of Louis’s rom-coms together, and they sit with their arm around Louis in quiet but solid support. Today, they pause. Instead of talking with their eyes, they talk out loud instead. 

“You want to go to the park, mate?” they ask Louis.

Louis is surprised at the seemingly random suggestion, but if Zayn wants to go to the park, damned if Louis won’t carry them all six city blocks there if need be. Luckily for him, the two of them end up skating there instead, Louis with his graffiti-ed skateboard and Zayn with their rollerblades. 

It’s a nice day, which feels a little like a slap in the face to Louis. Everyone they pass on the street looks so happy, and the sun is shining down as if it’s blessing everyone but Louis with its light. Louis throws the bird at said celestial object as he and Zayn skate into the park, stopping by the fountain in the center of it. 

“Do you hear that?” Louis asks after they’ve been sitting on the edge of the fountain for a minute catching their breath. He tilts his head towards the sound, bangs falling in front of his eyes. 

Zayn smiles, and if Louis were looking at that expression in retrospect, he’d probably realize that there was a mischievous tilt to that smile, as if Zayn were in the act of carrying out a plan. As it is, Louis is too occupied with his own frustratingly single predicament to see the look as anything other than an amiable smile. 

But he hears something. And it’s like… the blank canvas he didn’t draw before, the one that his brain feels like—a spot falls on that canvas. A brief, tiny dot of color stains Louis’s thoughts when he hears the sound. It feels significant.

He looks up, curious as to who’s holding the invisible brush. “Is that your phone?” he asks Zayn, but they just shake their head.

“Nope,” they say, and pop the “p”, still smiling. They lift the camera hung around their neck by a strap and snap a picture of an elderly couple walking through the park. Zayn looks very blasé, and if Louis were being attentive, he’d probably be suspicious. As it is, he’s just trying to pinpoint the source of the notes he’s hearing.

“I’m gonna go over there,” he tells Zayn, and they nod without looking up from their camera screen. Louis isn’t gesturing anywhere as he says “there”, just sort of waving his hands, but after another second he’s skating after the sound, chasing it down as it gets louder and more distinct. It’s the sound of guitar chords, he realizes after a minute, and the sound of a low-pitched voice singing along. 

It’s the sound of color splattering against a blank page, wet and bright. Not paying attention to his feet, Louis nearly skates into a woman walking in the opposite direction and brings his momentum to a quick stop, jumping off his board and catching it before it goes flying. “Sorry,” he mumbles quickly, but the woman’s already gone, black hair caught in the wind behind her.

In her place is a guitar, and hands, nails trimmed and shiny with clear lacquer, the tattoo of a small cross on the right one, strumming across the six strings of the guitar. He sees the hands first, and the guitar, and he _hears._

_blue_

Louis doesn’t think, he just yanks out one of the white pages he always shoves into his jacket pocket just in case he needs to draw, just in case of times like right now, two twenty-one in the afternoon according to his phone. Louis doesn’t think, he just pulls out whatever other shit he has in his pocket that makes marks on white—today, a blue crayon and a 2B graphite pencil. _I can work with that,_ he thinks. 

He takes in the boy playing guitar on the park bench with his hands more than his head; if he’s looking with his eyes it’s only so that the colors and shapes that make up the boy can take a direct line to Louis’s fingers, and then to the crumpled page he’s clutching onto. He doesn’t think, but he stands there along with the half dozen other people lingering around to listen to the boy play. The people come and go, and Louis doesn’t keep track of time. He only notices anything at all when Zayn taps him on the shoulder, indicating their presence. The sun looks lower in the sky than it did before, Louis thinks. But he’s not sure.

“I’m going back to the dorm now for dinner,” Zayn says. “You coming with, Lou?”

Louis nods more out of habit than decision, eyes unfocusing from spending so long trapped inside the drawing. God, he’d been out of it, he realizes slowly, blinking. “Yeah,” he says, stretching out an arm. 

But he pauses. “Zayn,” he mumbles into his roommate’s ear, “there’s a very attractive boy playing guitar right there.” He was looking before, looking for hours, but he hasn’t _looked_ at the boy until now. It’s different, without a pencil in hand.

Zayn raises an eyebrow at Louis. “Really?” they say, amused.

“Yeah—“ Louis pauses again, for a different reason this time. In the background, the boy’s guitar notes swell in volume as if in response to the narrowing of Louis’s eyes, the crossing of his arms. “Zayn,” he says suspiciously, to which his roommate replies with a horribly innocent smile. 

“Do you know him?” he asks, lowering his voice again when the boy playing guitar looks up as if he’d heard. 

Zayn shakes their head. “I just know he plays in the park every Saturday afternoon.” Their eyes twinkle mischievously. “Also, if you’re interested…”

“Does he,” Louis whispers, then just gestures to himself instead of saying the words out loud. “You think?” He doesn’t say any of the important words: _like. People like me. Gay._ The other ones, whatever they are.

“He sings to people using he/him/his pronouns instead of she/her/hers ones,” Zayn shrugs. “Is your rom-com soul captivated?”

Louis spares another glance at the boy. It’s not even that he’s pretty, with brunette curls down to his shoulders and blue-gray eyes like Louis’s drawing utensils for the day. Louis could care less about _pretty_  (although the boy _is,_ very much so).But his music—it’s not even the kind Louis usually listens to, but the boy makes old ass pop shit sound _good._ And “good” isn’t a good enough word for it. Louis would have to paint the music to properly describe it, he thinks. And he’s not sure he could ever have enough colors to do that.

“Before I met him, my world was black and white,” Louis tells Zayn. “I see in color now, and the world is beautiful.” His words are melodramatic as shit and they both know it, but it’s _Louis._ Louis, back in action. Louis, with a little hope inside of him. “Isn’t it pretttyyy, Zayn,” he says, grinning as he elbows his roommate. They roll their eyes at him.

“Sure, sure it is,” they concede. “The world is beautiful.”

“I’m gonna go try and,” Louis considers his options for a moment. He’s seen hundreds of romance movies, knows how this goes. He calculates things over in his head, glancing around as if the added information about his location might help. “Movie magic,” he tells Zayn, rubbing his hands together. “I’m gonna try for that.”

“I’ll stand over here while you do that,” they answer, pointing. They look somewhere between amused and supportive, which is probably the best Louis is going to get. He’ll take it.

His first grand plan involves tossing an exorbitant amount of cash in guitar boy’s open case. Except Louis doesn’t have an exorbitant amount of cash on him. He’s got a couple of quarters in his jeans, and he’s probably going to need those to ride the bus eventually. Plan B involves tossing a rose into the case, maybe with his phone number scrawled on a slip of paper wrapped around it. Louis is also short on flowers, as it is.

In the end, he does what’s probably the best thing possible: he completely fucks it up. A moment later, he’s on his back on the ground post trying to do a sick trick on his skateboard in front of curly-haired guitar boy, and _shit,_ it hurts. “It” is basically everything he is composed of.

_a color: blood red_

Guitar boy is peering over Louis’s fallen figure, curls falling down over his shoulders. “Yo, are you okay, mate?” he asks.

Louis is pretty sure his palms are bleeding from trying to catch himself. “I drew a picture of you because you play really nice music,” he manages, and holds up the drawing, which, _huh,_ is still in his hand. There’s a little blood on it, yeah. But it's still there, so hey, it works.

The boy takes the page and stares, his eyes wide and blue. “Holy shit you’re good at drawing,” he says in one quick breath.

“Thanks,” says Louis dryly. Dryly not because he’s being particularly sarcastic but because he’s looking up at the boy from the concrete, with bruises forming on his back and scrapes on his arms from his palms to his elbows. “Fuck,” he mumbles, lifting his head to see the extent of it. “That’s gonna need a few band-aids.”

Guitar boy remembers that there’s an injured kid at his feet when he looks away from the drawing again. “Shit, do you need help? There’s a drugstore around the corner, I can walk you there to get band-aids.”

“It’s okay, I just live on campus; I can get them for free at the medical center there,” Louis almost says. Except guitar boy’s got a gentle hand on Louis’s, and concerned blue eyes, and it’d almost be sinful not to appease his worry, right? “That’d be great, thanks,” he says instead, and gives guitar boy a grateful smile. “I’m Louis,” he says after he’s let the boy help him to his feet.

“Harry,” guitar boy introduces himself. 

From there? It’s easy. The two of them fit together with hardly any effort (except for the part where Louis’s back is killing him). Harry puts his guitar back in its case and hitches the whole thing onto his back, and they walk, talking about Harry’s music and Louis’s scrapes and the weather. Louis throws an apologetic glance over his shoulder at Zayn as he’s walking off, and they just roll their eyes at him and sign at Louis that they’ll just take a few more laps skating around the park.

“Okay,” Louis signs back with a quick gesture of his fingers. 

“No, but shit, mate, was that really just cheesy old boy band music you were playing?” he asks Harry, honestly curious. “Because I actually _liked_ it.”

Harry gives him a humored look. “You just lowkey insulted half the music I listen to, I think.”

“That I did,” Louis agrees. “But I complimented _you,_ so…”

“It’ll have to do,” guitar boy sighs, but he’s smiling as he does so. 

Things go perfectly from there. 

It’s as if Louis’s luck changes completely after the fall—apparently Fate only wanted a small blood sacrifice on his part in exchange for everything Louis has been hoping for. Harry bandages up all his scrapes, and sticks Louis’s drawing to the inside of his guitar case, and says he‘ll see Louis later, hopefully. 

Louis grins in reply, because his number’s already scrawled in the corner of the drawing he gave Harry, in place of a signature. The sky is dark by the time he gets back to Zayn, newly fixed-up with bandages and compliments, with a growing sense of happiness splattered across the canvas of his head. Louis just smiles at his roommate in place of greeting them, only widening the curve of his lips when Zayn stares back with judgmental Liam eyes.

“I will buy you an extra large strawberry shake for waiting that long for me,” Louis promises them.

“You don’t have any money,” Zayn points out. 

“And I’m not even worried about it!” Louis grins.

“I feel better,” he says, quieter.

“You’re not about to spend every moment of your time thinking about him,” Zayn is quick to say, narrowing their eyes at him as the two of them head back to their dorm. 

“Course not,” Louis assures him, and it’s an outright lie, but he gets what Zayn means—feeling better doesn’t mean much if it’s only because he’s using a new person as a crutch. 

“I just want to ask,” Zayn says. Louis raises his eyebrows. “Was that part of the plan?” They nod at his skateboard. 

Louis snorts. “That was the opposite of the plan. But it worked,” he says, pleased. 

“You’re welcome for introducing you, then,” his roommate says, already shaking their head. 

Louis grins back. “Thank you.”

_blushing red_

“Hey, is this Louis?”

“Oh my god you called instead of texting I love it, Harry, I love it. Stay in my phone contacts forever?”

“Until we’re all using Star Trek-style communicators instead of phones.”

“You’re my kind of man, Harry.”

“Glad to hear it. Do I still qualify if listen to the Beach Boys and NSYNC?”

“Give me a couple days to think about it.”

“I’ve got a couple days to try and impress you before you ditch me, then.”

“I’ll be interested to see what you come up with.”

“So what sort of music do you listen to, then?”

“Hm. Lots of Blink, and All Time Low, and, let’s see—“

“Pfft—wait, am I hearing the sound of you going through your CD collection?”

“Maybe.”

“You have CDssss Louis.”

“I do indeed. Do you?”

“…Sorry, I nodded instead of saying—yeah, I do.”

“Simple Plan, Good Charlotte, twenty one pilots—“

“Yess Louis they’re one of my favorite bands—“

“So maybe you can get a week instead of a couple days—“

“What’s your favorite song by them?”

“I can’t help falling in love with you.”

“You’re _lying._ ”

“I gotta say the romantic one, don’t I?”

“Because that’s my favorite.”

“Shit it is? Harry, it’s a cover, not even one of their original ones.”

“Don’t laugh at me!”

“I’m not laughing _at_ you, mate, I’m laughing _with_ you. There’s a difference, yeah?”

“They sound the same.”

“I’d be worried about having offended you, but I can hear you smiling.”

“You’re lying. Again.”

“Nah, I swear, I can hear it. It sounds like, hm. Sunshine. Makes my ear feel a little warmer when your voice comes through the little phone speaker by it. See, now _you’re_ laughing, Harry.”

“I think I can hear you smiling, too, Louis.”

“You’ve got good ears, then.”

“They’re beautiful ears, I know.”

“I can’t even argue with you, unfortunately.”

“I know.”

“Of course you do.”

“You have a nice smile, Louis.”

“Why thank you.”

“I can hear you blushing.”

“Ah, come on, that’s BS, Harry.”

“Nope! It’s not!”

“What does blushing sound like, then?”

“What does smiling sound like?"

“I told you, remember? It sounds like sunshine and warmth and all that happy shit that makes me want to paint murals and murals and—you know, that shit.”

“Well, blushing sounds like the color red, then. Or ukulele songs. Like you’re biting your lip and crossing your feet and looking at your shoes and smiling all the same time.”

“Are you watching me right now, Harry.”

“…Sorry, I was shaking my head—I just. Was doing the same thing. Blushing and all that shit. So I was describing...”

“He’s so adorable.”

“Are you talking to someone else or just like the wall?”

“Um. The wall. The wall agrees with me.”

“Do you make a habit of talking to walls?”

“All my favorite musicians are on my wall, so, I mean…”

“You were telling Alex Gaskarth how adorable I am.”

“…Do you hear that?”

“Blushingggg.”

“So much.”

“Told you it was a sound.”

“ _You’re_ a sound, Harry.”

“Yes. I am.”

“Hmph. Well. Yes, you are.”

“Louis?”

“Yeah?”

“It was nice to meet you."

“…You too, Harry.”

“I can hear that.”

“Oh, _shush_!”

_black— >pink_

“This is my roommate, Zayn,” Louis tells Harry at the park next Saturday, gesturing to Zayn like they’re a three-dimensional work of art—which is true enough. They look pretty as hell with their hair pinned up in bun and their nails painted over with pink now. “They/them/theirs pronouns.”

“Cool.” Harry smiles, taking Zayn’s hand when they hold theirs out to shake. “Oh my god you’re cute,” he rushes out, eyes wide and sparkling, once he’s given them a proper look-over. 

“Sorry, Louis; I think Harry likes me better,” Zayn tells their roommate, grinning. 

“I can’t even blame him,” Louis sighs, shaking his head. “It was a good run we had, you and I, Harry.”

“It truly was,” Harry agrees. 

“You’ll be chapter fourteen in my autobiography.”

“Twenty page feature, ay.” 

“I’ll toss in a link to your soundcloud,” Louis promises.

“Gimme that promo, love.” Harry lets go of Zayn’s hand finally to give Louis a high-five (but not before giving them an apologetic look). 

“Shit, mates, I’m not trying to break you up,” Zayn says, rolling their eyes at the Harry and Louis’s dramatics. 

“I mean, if you’d like to—“ Harry starts, grinning when Louis smacks him on the arm. 

“It’s not like we’re dating,” Louis almost says. Instead he shoves a page to Harry’s chest.

“What’s this?” Harry asks coyly, holding the paper to his shirt without looking. 

“Divorce papers.” Louis sticks his tongue out at him.

Harry’s eyes drink in Louis’s drawing harder than he’d been stanning Zayn a moment ago, though. “Can I kinkshame you for liking my art so much if it’s _my_ art?” Louis wonders out loud.

“You draw so well, though,” Harry protests. “Legit, Louis, just looking at it makes me want to play guitar, and learn new songs, and hell, paint, and I can’t make art for shit.”

“Nah, you’re messing it up, mate,” Louis disagrees, shaking his head. “That’s how your music makes _me_ feel.”

Harry’s eyes go wide again, and Louis can basically see hearts in his eyes, bright and pink. _God, he’s cute._ “Like seeing in color instead of black and white.”

For a moment they’re just staring at each other with new eyes, seeing each other’s colors and wanting to paint, draw, sing, write. Then, Zayn speaks up from behind Louis: “Hey, you hear that squeaky sound?”

Harry’s eyebrows furrow. “I don’t think so?”

Louis sees it coming, is already rolling his eyes when Zayn answers, “That’s me being the third wheel to all your cheesy artistic shit.” They don’t mind, really; they just like antagonizing Louis, he knows. He’s still going to threaten to withhold their strawberry shake later, anyway.

“Like you weren’t taking pictures of us while we were,” Louis returns.

“I’ve got to have some snapshots for your anniversary album,” Zayn points out.

“We’re not _married,_ ” Louis almost says. “Take a nice one,” he says instead, throwing an arm around Harry’s shoulders and putting on a wide smile. 

“This one’s for the cover,” Zayn says. One of their pink nails presses the button on their camera, and the lens shutter snaps. Louis is extricating his arm from Harry’s form when Harry’s hand finds its way to Louis’s hip, pulling them close again.

“I think I blinked,” says Harry, winking. 

“Bullshit,” mumbles Zayn, but they take the picture anyway.

_A little pink_

“You want to watch a movie sometime?” Louis asks next week, sitting next to Harry on the park bench they’ve effectively adopted. 

“I was thinking about that,” Harry admits, his fingers pausing over his guitar strings. “But I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to watch any of my rom-com shit.”

Louis raises his eyebrows. “What, I don’t look like the type to enjoy a nice cheesy film of the romantic and comedic persuasion?”

Harry considers. “Well, I mean…” He shrugs, and Louis crosses his arms, waiting. “Kind of figured you for the action/adventure type.”

Louis smirks. “Zayn would be laughing so hard if they heard you say that.”

“You watch rom-coms.” Harry doesn’t look quite convinced.

“I _collect_ them, love,” Louis tells him, leaning back in his seat. “Like, literally.”

“Is that where you came up with that spectacular entrance?” Harry asks, grinning even when Louis tries to shove him off the bench, instrument and all.

“We don’t speak of that incident,” Louis corrects him, pushing his fingers to the boy’s lips. Harry laughs against them, his breath warm. Louis thinks of the color pink. 

“How’s your back?” 

“Oh my fucking—“

“I _mean it,_ that shit looked like it really hurt, mate!” Harry protests. He pulls at Louis’s hands to examine them properly. Louis’s palms are still a bit rough to the touch, and his arms are still a little pink and scraped up. “I could never ride one of those things,” Harry says, giving the skateboard leaning against their bench a weary eye. “Too clumsy.”

Louis grins. “But it’s funnnn, Harry. Besides, I almost think it helps you with balance—the first day I had my board I got so bruised and scraped from practicing that my mum tried hiding it from me so I couldn’t go back outside the next morning and break a limb.”

“I take it there’s a happy ending to this story?”

He thinks about that for a second, making a show of fingering the small amount of scruffy facial hair he has on his chin like he’s some wise philosopher or something. “I offered my siblings a reward for finding it and one of my sisters found it eventually, and then I did break my arm trying to skate down a hill the next day, come to think of it—“ Harry’s looking at him suspiciously. “What I meant to say,” Louis clarifies, “is when I first started I was pretty clumsy, too, but I think I’m better now. I’d like to think, anyway,” he mumbles, turning over his arm to frown at the scrapes there.

“That was a very convincing argument,” Harry tells him.

“Really?”

“Fuck no,” Harry says, but only with the look on his face. With his lips, he says, “Maybe we’ll start with the movie.” With his lips, he smiles.

_a different blue_

Another Saturday, Louis is scrolling through movie reviews on IMDb while Harry sings, “Bus stop, wet day, he's there, I say, please share my umbrella. Bus stop, bus goes, he stays, love grows, under my umbrella…” A man walks by and tosses a few bills in Harry’s guitar choice, complimenting his song choice. A few younger kids sit in the grass nearby, shyly listening but looking away and giggling when Harry tries to smile at them. 

 _Action film, kids’ movie, period drama._ Another romance flick that looks cute as shit, but probably has another couple sex scenes during which Louis can conveniently find a reason to duck out of the theater for five minutes. It only took two trips to the local theater with Zayn for them to figure out he wasn’t just running out because he was feeling a sudden craving for Raisinets. 

And then had come the talk—Louis hadn't really ever told anyone he was asexual, still hasn’t, but he’s pretty sure Zayn knew even before Louis started ranting regularly about sex in the media and asexual representation. They’re observant like that, noticing all the little flinches even Louis doesn’t realize he’s making sometimes when he’s uncomfortable. God, without them, _no one_ would probably know about him. 

Louis isn’t sure what Harry would think of him if he knew, and honestly? He doesn’t _want_ to find out. This whole thing, whatever they are, it’s going so _well._ So he keeps his mouth shut and draws some trees, some clouds, the kids sitting in the grass. Harry’s voice weaves in and out of Louis’s head, singing along to the sounds of his guitar. 

“That’s the way the whole thing started, silly, but it’s true—thinkin’ of a sweet romance, beginning in a queue…”

One of the kids is flinching. The girl with the braids frowns and stares at her shoes, fingers knotting together in anxiety. “Come on, tell us which boy you have a crush on,” the girl sitting next to her insists, pushing a hand wreathed in bracelets against the former’s shoulder. 

“Why won’t you tell us?” one boy asks.

Louis feels like he’s in middle school again, which is probably really senseless, but it’s a _feeling_ , not a rational thought. The dialogue stains his head with colors he hates so that he doesn’t even think to intervene like he should, or maybe he shouldn’t—he has no fucking clue. Instead of doing anything to help the girl, he just locks up inside. He’s about to excuse himself from the bench for the sake of an impromptu bathroom break when Harry stops playing, looking over at the circle of grade-schoolers.

“Hey, she doesn’t have to tell you, you know.” The kids look up, the girl with the braids wide-eyed.

“Maybe she doesn’t like anyone like that right now,” Harry continues. “Or maybe she likes girls, or other people. Either way, she doesn’t have to tell you if she’s not comfortable with it. You don’t have to,” he says, looking at the girl, his voice softer.

Something about it. His voice. Or maybe Louis just can’t shut up for shit when it comes to things like this, even if talking about it does make him uncomfortable. Something about something. 

“Maybe she doesn’t ever like anyone,” Louis cuts in, eyeing down the rest of the girl’s group with the sort of look that’ll probably give them nightmares for weeks. _Never said I was good at this._ “Not everyone grows up wanting to like boys, or girls, or _whoever,_ you know that? Some people just want to play with model airplanes, or video games, or draw and shit…”

“You probably shouldn’t swear,” Harry advises Louis’s ear.

“And crap,” Louis amends, his heart beating wildly having spoken up about the Thing he doesn’t talk about. The kids are all staring at him, and so is Harry, and shit, it feels uncomfortable. “Just saying,” he mumbles, then says, much too late, “I gotta use the bathroom.”

_gray_

_Bad idea. Bad idea._ Not that it’d been an idea to speak up so much as an impulse, but still. And he only made it worse by running away, Louis is sure. 

He loses track of the time he spends staring into the stained mirror of the men’s room, thinking about things. Getting caught up in things. Eventually, the door opens up and Harry comes in, setting down his guitar case and Louis’s abandoned skateboard and sketchbook before settling next to Louis’s adopted spot at the sinks.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asks, and Louis remembers him saying almost the same thing on day one. 

“I drew a picture of you because you make the cheesiest music sound spectacular,” Louis answers, but he’s not holding a drawing with scraped-up hands this time, just a scraped-up head. 

Harry’s not playing along with Louis’s quoting game, though. He frowns, and he shouldn’t, Louis thinks. Someone as light and beautiful as him shouldn’t be sad. Louis tries to poke at Harry’s lips to make him smile again, but his efforts only yield a tiny quirk of Harry’s mouth into a curve that’s as brief as it is small. 

“Don’t frown,” he mumbles.

Harry waves him off. “There’s something you’re not telling me.” Which sums things up pretty well, yes. “You don’t have to tell me if you’re not comfortable talking about it. But you just look really stressed, and…” _Harry_ looks really stressed, just looking at Louis.

“I’m afraid,” Louis almost says. Instead, he says, “I gotta go,” and runs out again.

_black_

So here he is again, having traveled full circle on what has apparently been an extended route just leading back to his bed. Louis wearily eyes the ceiling, blinking slowly, thinking fast. 

He doesn’t hear Zayn coming in, but he doesn’t hear them do anything else, either, just feels their eyes on him and then them crawling in bed next to him and settling into his side. Warm. 

Silence, for a while. Then:

“I can’t date Harry,” Louis confesses to Zayn, to their quiet dorm room. His voice isn’t words so much as sounds, small and anxious. “I don’t _want_ to—I don’t want to even kiss him, much less anything else. It’s never gonna work, I don’t know why I thought it would…” The silence only yanks more words out of his mouth. “It’s so easy to just forget about it and be happy with him, you know? But I can’t stop worrying about it, I gotta do it before I like him even more. Have to break it off.” 

Zayn wraps an arm around him and pulls him closer to them, brushing through his hair with their fingers, nails painted a dark shade of green now. Louis thinks of trees.

“You don’t want to break it off, though,” they point out, words soft and gentle in Louis’s ear.

“I just want…” Louis grimaces. “Just want things to stay like they are now. But it can’t. I like him too much already, and I _want_ to, but it’d just fuck everything up; god, it was dumb of me to even try…”

Zayn holds him a fraction tighter, compensating for their lack of words with pure arm strength to show their love for Louis. It’s very Zayn, and the thought makes Louis smile just a little. It’s a bitter curve to his lips more than a happy one, but it’s something. 

“Louisss,” they just say at first, hugging him tightly. 

His smile flickers again, a little more positive now. “Zaayynnn,” Louis mumbles affectionately in return. Zayn’s hair is soft against his cheek, their body protective around Louis’s. _Comfortable._ Louis just wants to hide here like this for the rest of his existence. He might need one of his arms free to draw, but he only needs the one, so hey, maybe it’s a plausible plan.

Then, Zayn speaks up again: “I didn’t come out to my parents until last year because I thought they wouldn’t get it,” they say quietly, voice kind of contemplative. “Figured at best they’d just think it was a phase; at worst, they’d think I was a freak for wanting people to call me they/them, for being pan and shit.” Louis cuddles into them instinctively. “But my older sister figured me out and we talked and she didn’t get it entirely… but she was really open about it, and I realized maybe it wouldn’t go horribly if I told my parents, or whoever else…”

They ponder their words for a bit before going on, “And my parents were really nice about it, too. It just made me think, it’s important to have a bit of hope, yeah?” They shrug. “Just… some words for ya, mate.”

“I should at least try telling Harry before deciding to abandon all hope that he’ll get it,” Louis translates in a mumble, eyes on the posters on his wall. He tries to beat poster-Mark Hoppus in a staring contest and loses by a long shot; Mark’s still not blinking when Louis turns to tuck his head into Zayn’s neck. “Have to at least try.”

Zayn’s fingers comb through Louis’s fringe, soft and comforting. “That’s how all the films end, right? Even if the end’s shit, you still hope for a different one anyway.” They shrug. “And maybe it surprises you.”

Louis closes his eyes and breathes, slower and steadier.

_blue, gray_

The following Saturday is colder than the last, wind rushing through the trees and pulling Harry’s curls in every direction. His eyes look cooler than the goosebumps on his skin, though, uncharacteristically flat. His fingers look numb running over the strings on his guitar, like they’re just going through the motions instead of really enjoying what they’re doing. 

Louis’s heart has already dropped inside his chest by the time he’s close enough to hear Harry’s voice, and the feeling just gets that much stronger when he hears the words clearly. “Where are you?” Harry sings—“and I’m so sorry. I cannot sleep, I cannot dream tonight… I need somebody and always, this sick strange darkness comes creeping on so haunting every time—“

If his first entrance was shit, Louis makes up for it on the second attempt, or he hopes so, anyway. “Blink 182, Harry?” he queries, stepping in front of Harry’s open guitar case. He tosses in some change he’ll probably need for the bus later, but he can figure that out when he gets to it. “I thought you didn’t like any of my favorites.”

Harry’s fingers fall off the strings. “I was worried about you.” His voice is uncertain. “You didn’t answer when I called.”

Louis takes in a deep breath, hands in his pockets. “I had to figure things out.”

Harry tilts his head, waiting. “And?” 

Another breath. Louis has practiced saying it in his head all week, all with different words, but in the end, he just uses two, and maybe they’re the best out of all of them. “I’m asexual,” he says, and it’s simple, and honestly? It’s a relief. From here on out, let it be known that he tried, and whatever happens, it wasn’t for lack of that. Ayy.

“I really like you, Harry,” he goes on, and the words start coming easier, flowing faster with every letter. “I really like _this,_ and you, and it’s just been really nice, and I didn’t want it to end, but I freaked, because—I really like you, mate, and the more I see you the more I do, and I can’t let myself get involved like that, but I am, and—shit.” He shifts his feet, watches Harry’s eyes, cool before but a little different-looking now. “Because every Saturday I spend sitting here I’m going to want to spend Sundays and Mondays and Tuesdays with you, too, walk around town holding hands and singing love songs and shit, but I don’t want to kiss you, and that’d just fuck everything up.” Another breath. He’s got this. “Harry—“

But now Harry’s shushing him, setting his guitar aside to talk. “Louis.” His voice is color staining Louis’s grayscale mind, and Louis drinks it in greedily; if it’s the last words he hears from Harry, he’ll commit them to memory at the very least. 

Words: “Louis, that’s okay.”

Louis blinks.

“Really.”

But he shakes his head. “No, but it’s not, because every way you work it out, it never works,” Louis rushes, gesturing. “I can’t be friends with you if I just want to date you; I can’t date you if I’m ace and you’re not—“

“Louis.”

He stares. “What?”

Harry’s eyes are blue-gray, like the drawing utensils Louis had on him day one. “I’m on the same spectrum—demisexual.”

Louis stares more. “What?”

Harry’s eyes are blue-gray, steely and soft in equal parts. “Louis, I don’t give a shit if you’re not comfortable kissing me. It’s cool, yeah?” The last part is gentler, spoken when  Harry stands so that they’re just inches apart now, looking eye to eye. “I don’t want to, either, to be honest.”

“…” is all that comes through Louis’s lips at first. Then, it’s “Shit, that’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me, Harry.”

Harry’s mouth curves into a smile. “More to come,” he promises. “If you want,” he amends, looking to Louis for an answer.

Louis smiles back, hesitant at first. “I’m a sucker for musicians,” he says, laughing when Harry rolls his eyes.

“It’s a good thing you can draw, Lou.”

“I have a nickname,” Louis gapes, hands to his cheeks. “Praise.” He looks at Harry fondly, eyes soft—and that’s when he gets an idea. 

“What?” Harry asks when he sees Louis staring him over. “Is there something on my face?” He wipes at his cheek as if there’s dirt there, looking up expectantly. 

Louis throws him a mischievous grin. “Not yet.”

_a color: actually, more than just one_

_Louis’s art professor has weary eyes. It’s mostly because Liam always looks sort of sad, Louis thinks, but it’s also the look he’s come to expect to fall over the man’s face every time he circles the class and comes back to look at the canvas Louis is painting over. Or, depending on the day, this being one of them, the canvas he’s not painting over._

_“So,” says Liam, raising his eyebrows, thick and expressive, like brushstrokes. “Tell me again how this work personifies your current state of mind, Louis.”_

Louis leans back on his paint-splattered stool, grinning. He’d spent the last month without the faintest idea as to what the hell he was going to paint for his final project for Liam’s class, feeling anxiety tugging at him almost constantly by the end of last week. (Freaking out about Harry hadn’t helped, either). He’s got that figured out now, though, and he feels so _light,_ walking around with two people now who know about him. It’s not many, maybe, but it’s the ones who matter, so ay.

Liam eyes Louis’s proclaimed project with raised eyebrows, considering. His face is subtle nuances of thought: curiosity, interest, a softening, a smirk. A sigh, of course. “Only you would do this for a final project, Louis,” says the tired shake of his head. Then, out loud, he says, “Only you would do this for a final project, Louis.”

Louis smiles wide. “Then it’s perfect, right?”

This time, his work feels finished. 

His work: an abandoned canvas back in his dorm room, covered in frustrated paint splatters and hard charcoal marks. His work: an idea. His work: Harry and Zayn, painted over in all the colors Louis associates with them. Harry with blue around his eyes and patterned across his face, intermingled with shades of red. Zayn with pink streaking up their arms from their fingernails up to their shoulders, green covering their neck. Harry with yellow at his fingertips, like light. The two of them stand next to Louis, and he thinks of guardian angels.

Behind Liam, Niall smiles sunnily at Louis, approving. His own canvas is its own sort of evolution from day one: an intricate rendering of the inside of his dorm room that probably took weeks, with paint dripping over it as if he’d accidentally spilled a half dozen colors on it just after finishing. “Yessss, Niall,” Louis would say, except he’s presenting his own final project now, so.

“I feel so damn pretty,” read the words Louis scrawled on Zayn’s arm, like a second layer of tattoos. Harry’s say, simply, “Louis, that’s okay.” And it is, and that’s beautiful to Louis. So what else would he want to paint?

“I think my work is flawless,” Louis starts. 

He’s pretty sure that he’s right.


End file.
